Deputy Jenney, with a crumpled copy of the _Free Press_ in his hand,
rushed into Abner Fownes’s office--for once omitting the formality of
rapping on the door. He threw the paper upon the desk and stood huge,
bristling, speechless.
“What’s this?... What’s this?” Abner demanded, sharply.
“Read it. Read it and see.... Hell’s busted loose in the henhouse.”
Abner smoothed out the paper and read. His face did not change, but
his little eyes glowed dully, with a light not pleasant to see, one
that suggested pent-up heat, a compression of scorching, searing forces
capable of awful explosion. He read the story of the finding of the
whisky _cache_ from beginning to end; then reread it, missing no word,
no suggestion. Jenney directed him to the editorial page with its
conjectures and comment. For some moments he did not speak, but stared
at his desk top with those dull-glowing eyes until one might have
expected to see wisps of smoke arising from the spot they touched.
Strangely enough, the thoughts of Abner Fownes were not upon the
words he had read in the newspaper, but on the writer of them. He
was thinking of her apart from this journalistic bomb which she had
set off under the feet of Gibeon. Presently he would give that his
consideration, but now Carmel Lee stood in the midst of his thoughts,
and he reached out to engulf her in his hatred. He hated her with a
burning, aching, hungry intensity--with the hatred of a vain man who
has been humiliated and stripped stark of his vanity. The very words
she had used, but, more than those, the expression of her eyes, was
with him now. He watched her and listened to her again, and felt
himself shrinking and deflating before her anger.... She despised
him--him, Abner Fownes! Despised him! And he hated her for despising
him. He hated her for stripping away so ruthlessly the mantle of
pretense he had erected between himself and his own eyes. She had
humiliated him before his own soul, and his soul was sick with the
shame of it.
For years he had lived with his pretense until it had become a part of
himself, like the grafted branch upon the sterile tree. None in Gibeon
had gainsaid his own estimate of himself. In his small realm he had
been supreme--until he had come himself to believe his own pretense....
He hid Abner Fownes from himself studiously; allowed him to admire
himself, to look upon himself as good and great.... In those wakeful
moments of his soul when it opened its eyes and saw him as he was, he
suffered acutely--and applied the ever-ready anesthetic.
Now this girl, to whom he had grandly thrown his handkerchief like
some Oriental potentate, had dared to snatch away his disguise and to
destroy it utterly. Never again could he wear it, because he would feel
her eyes piercing it. Such a garment is only to be worn when there is
none in all the world to recognize that it is a disguise. Once a single
soul lifts the mask and gazes upon the reality lurking within, and the
thing is done. Abner Fownes knew Carmel saw him as he was--not by sure
knowledge, grounded upon fact, perhaps, but by intuition. Now he would
forever question, and his question would be: Did others see him as he
was? Was the adulation showered on him a pretense? Was the attitude
people maintained before him a sham, an ironical sham? Was the world
laughing at and despising him, as Carmel Lee despised him?... It was
unbearably bitter to a man whose natural element was vanity; who had
existed in vanity, breathed it, fed upon it, for a score of years.
It is no wonder he hated her!... He no longer desired her. His one
thought was to revenge himself upon her, to humiliate her publicly
as she had humiliated him before his own eyes. He wanted to degrade
her, to besmirch her, to defile her so that her soul would cry out
with horror at sight of herself, as his soul revolted at the thing she
had conjured up before his own eyes. His was not that hatred which
kills. It was more cruel than that, more cowardly, more treacherous,
more horrible. His was the hatred which could satisfy itself only by
setting Carmel in the pillory; by damning her body and soul and then by
exhibiting her to a taunting world....
He wrenched his eyes away from his desk, his thoughts away from his
hatred.
“What d’you mean by coming here with this, you fool?” he demanded,
savagely.
Deputy Jenney reared back on his heels from the shock of it and goggled
at Abner.
“Want to advertise to the world that I care a damn what she prints
about whisky? Want the town to clack and question and wonder what I’ve
got to do with it?”
“I--I thought you’d want to know.”
“I’d find out soon enough.”
“What you aim to do about it?”
“Do.... Get on record as soon as I can. Congratulate the _Free Press_
on its courage and public spirit.”
“But she’ll pull somethin’ down onto us--her and that perfessor.
Attractin’ notice to Gibeon. Fust we know, we’ll be havin’ Federal
officers here, and then what?”
“We’ve fiddled long enough.... We’ll petition the Governor to appoint a
sheriff--before somebody else gets his ear.”
“Me?” said Jenney.
“I guess folks’ll have to stomach you,” said Abner.
“But what about that danged paper? No tellin’ what she’ll hit on if she
goes nosin’ around. Anyhow, she’ll git folks all het up and excited.”
“Well, what would you do about it?” Abner snapped.
“Me? I’d git me about a dozen fellers and fill ’em with booze and give
’em sledge hammers. Then I’d turn ’em loose on that printin’ office,
and when they got through there wouldn’t be enough left of it to print
a ticket to a church sociable with.”
“Um!...”
“That ’u’d settle _that_.”
“I suppose you’d lead them down yourself?”
“You bet.”
“I always thought you were a fool, Jenney. Why not stand by the town
jump and holler that you’re a whisky runner?... And you planning to be
sheriff....” Abner waggled his head. “This is the kind of brains I have
to trust to,” he said, sourly.
“Hain’t nobody else to do it,” said Jenney, defensively.
“Seems like Peewee Bangs might be kind of irritated by a newspaper
piece like this--and you can trust Peewee to keep in the background,
too.”
Jenney slapped his leg, “And he’s got a bunch of plug-uglies handy,
too.”
Abner motioned to the door. “Get out,” he said, “and don’t come near me
again till I send for you. I don’t want the smell of you on my clothes
when I walk down the street.”
Deputy Jenney walked down the road and presently turned upon Main
Street, which would carry him past the _Free Press_ office. He paused
at sight of a knot of people gathered before its window, and joined
them. Carmel had carried enterprise--or indiscretion--to its ultimate.
On a table in the window stood a quart bottle of Scotch whisky. Behind
it stood a placard announcing it to be the evidence in the case--a
veritable bottle from the smuggler’s _cache_ in the woods. Jenney
ground his teeth, and, seeing Evan Bartholomew Pell seated at his work,
saw red for an instant. He was an impulsive man, and temper often
carried him somewhat beyond the boundaries where good judgment reigned.
It is not easy to prophesy what he would have done had not a hand
rested on his arm.
“Whoo!... Easy there! So-ooo!” whispered a voice, and, looking down, he
saw the sharp, wolf-like features of the hunchback, Peewee Bangs.
“Interestin’ exhibit,” said Bangs. “Kind of stole a march on the
sheriff’s office.” He laughed a thin, shrill laugh.
“Come away from here. I got suthin’ to talk to ye about,” said Jenney.
“That,” said Peewee, “makes two of us.”
“What’s _he_ got to say about it?” Peewee asked when they had turned
the next corner and were in a deserted side street.
“He don’t want it to happen ag’in.”
“Don’t wonder at it. Him ’n’ me agrees.”
“It hain’t goin’ to,” said Jenney, meaningly.
“So.... Now, f’r instance.... You listen, Dep’ty, too many folks
disappearin’ and onaccounted for is goin’ to raise curiosity. Surer ’n’
shootin’.... More especial if it’s a woman.”
“No disappearin’s figgered on.... Anyhow, I’m goin’ to be appointed
sheriff by the Governor.... Naw. This here’s simple. Jest smashin’.”
“Like you done to the perfessor?... Gritty, wa’n’t he? Never kin tell,
kin ye?... I tell ye, Jenney, that perfessor’s a feller to figger on.
Shouldn’t be s’prised if he got to be dangerous.... I wonder how come
she to tie up to him.”
“’Tain’t that kind of smashin’. _He_ says fer you to git a dozen
fellers and fill ’em full, and then turn ’em loose on that printin’
shop with sledge hammers. Kind of tinker with it, like. Git the idee?”
“So-oo!... Me, eh? I can’t see me leadin’ no sich percession down Main
Street. Hain’t achin’ to git the public eye focused on me any. Talk
enough goin’ around now.”
“Fix it anyhow you like--only fix it.”
“What if the sheriff’s office is called to put down the disturbance?”
“It wouldn’t git much result, seems as though,” said the Deputy,
humorously.
Peewee Bangs walked leisurely back to reconnoiter the _Free Press_
office, and, having satisfied himself, clambered into his rickety car
and drove out of town in the general direction of the Lakeside Hotel.
Carmel Lee was seated at her desk, endeavoring to appear oblivious to
the excitement outside and to the air of hostility within. Everybody
disapproved. Even Simmy, the printer’s devil, went about with a look of
apprehension, and stopped now and then to peer at her reproachfully.
Tubal blustered and muttered. He had appeared that morning with an
automatic shotgun under his arm, which he stood against the case from
which he was sticking type.
“Going hunting?” Carmel asked, with pretended innocence.
“Self-pertection,” said Tubal, “is the fust six laws of nature, and the
bulk of all the rest of ’em.”
“You’re trying to frighten me,” Carmel said, “and you can’t do it. I
won’t be frightened.”
“Different here. I _be_ frightened.... Now go back and write some more
of them dynamite pieces, Lady, and after the next issue of this here
rag comes out--if it ever does--I’m goin’ to throw up breast-works and
see if I can’t borrow me a machine gun.”
“Fiddlesticks!” said Carmel.
Evan Pell did not refer to her work until she invited his comment. Then
he turned his eyes upon her with something of the old superciliousness
in them and said, dryly, “What is done is done.”
“I gather you don’t approve.”
“I most certainly do _not_,” he said.
“Why,” he countered, “did you not discuss this step with me?”
“Why should I?” she answered, sharply.
“In order,” he said, “to receive an intelligent idea of the course of
action to take.” He said this with flat finality, and turned his back.
Thereafter Carmel sulked.
She had expected some result--beneficial. Just what result she had not
envisaged. Perhaps she had expected some public ovation, some sign
that Gibeon sided with her in her efforts to the end of law and order.
If she had hoped for this, she was disappointed. Gibeon buzzed with
excitement, whispered in corners, gathered in knots, but, such of its
inhabitants as found reason to address her, studiously ignored the
subject. Gibeon was manifestly uneasy.
If merely the selling of newspapers was her object, she accomplished
that. The edition was exhausted before ten o’clock in the morning. No
new flood of advertising came to take advantage of the increase in
circulation.... She came to doubt her own judgment, and to wonder if
she had not acted again on impulse. It was an unpleasant feeling--to
know that those upon whom she most relied regarded her conduct with
hostility.
Nevertheless, she was determined to persist. How, with what material,
she did not know. She grew stubborn under opposition, and resolved that
no issue of the _Free Press_ should appear in which the thing should
not be followed up.
Evan Pell got up from his place and went out without a word. Presently
she heard Tubal banging about, preparatory to going home, and then she
was alone. She did not like the feeling of aloneness. The thing had
worn upon her more than she realized, and her nerve ends jangled. She
was conscious of a rising discomfort of mind, which resolved itself
into apprehension as dusk fell and shadows filtered in to flood the
corners of the room with blackness. Her mind persisted in thinking
of Sheriff Churchill, of the suddenness, the completeness of his
disappearing. He had stepped to his door--and from that instant the
world had lost him to sight. The mystery of it, the cruel efficiency
of it, caused her to shudder. If they--_they_--dared lay hands upon the
chief official of the county, what would cause them to hesitate to deal
with her in like manner?
She got up hastily, put away her work, and locked the office. It was
not until she was in the well-lighted office of the hotel that a
feeling of security came to her again. Then she laughed at herself, but
the laughter was a pretense and she knew it to be pretense.... Suddenly
she thought of Evan Pell. What of him? If there were danger, was not
his danger greater than hers? Already he was the victim of more than a
threat.
Her appetite for supper was far from robust and she was glad of the
quiet and security of her room. There she endeavored to read, and so
passed away the hours until her watch told her it was an hour from
midnight. She laid down her book, with a mind to retiring, when there
came a rush of footsteps in the corridor without and a pounding upon
her door.
“Lady! Lady!... Lemme in! Lemme in, quick!... It’s Simmy.”
She snatched open the door, and Simmy, face splotched with ink as it
had been hours before, plunged into the room.
“They’re comin’!” he said, so excitedly he could scarcely articulate.
“They’re comin’ with sledge hammers! Quick! They’re dum nigh there.”
She heard herself speak as though it were another individual. As
for herself, she was singularly calm, even cool. It had come--the
emergency. What was it? What did it bring to her?
“Who is coming with sledge hammers?” she asked.
“Mebby a dozen of ’em--drunk and staggerin’.”
“What are they going to do?”
“Smash the office to smithereens. Bust the presses. Knock everythin’ to
pieces, so’s we can’t never print no more.”
“How do you know? Who told you?”
“I was--hidin’ behind a fence.” He neglected to state that it was for
the purpose of feloniously obtaining watermelons. “And I heard ’em
talkin’. Peewee Bangs was givin’ ’em licker and tellin’ ’em what to
do.... Oh, what be we goin’ to do?”
Carmel had no idea, except that she was going to do something to avert
this destruction which would spell ruin to her and her paper. Not
pausing for hat or wrap, she tore open the door and rushed down the
stairs into the dark street.